Bathroom shelf/cabinet-Old project

This is an old project from when we first moved into our house. I made it with only corded hand tools, the router and jig saw being the ones I remember being used for sure. I had no table saw at the time, so I’m not sure if I cut the boards to length with a hand saw or my circular saw.

We needed a shelf in the bathroom. I genuinely don’t know if this was requested or if I took it upon myself to do this. I’m thinking I was asked.

I used 1×8 pine, cut it to length, and used my router to create a rabbet for the bottom shelf and a dado for the top one. The middle shelves are held in with nails and maybe) glue.

I painted it white with no primer. After time the knots start showing through, but we like the look. It’s very country. Each time we paint the bathroom I get to put another coat of paint on the piece, but the knots always come through. Cool.

This time, when we redid the bathroom I decided (by request) to put doors on the upper shelves, and a small backer on the upper shelf. The hanging hardware was two pieces of pipe hangar screwed to the top shelf. Along with the back piece, I added true to life hangers!.

The knobs were from my drawer of scrounged knobs from old dressers I’ve disassembled over the last few years. The doors are hung on home fashioned brass pin hinges and they hare held shut with two tiny strong magnets glued to one of the center shelves. A pair of thumb tacks in the back of the doors hold them in place.

See my ‘current progress’ post about this, including the comments. [link]

Looking back I’m surprised at how well this project was actually made. The shelves are level and nothing has fallen apart in 20 years. Maybe I was meant to do this after all.

Quite precise work with such limited tools. Regarding those hand made plans – that s how look my all plans, even more complicated ones.

- majuvla

Thanks. My ‘workshop’ at that time was just a small space carved out of the mess of stuff we had in the basement at the time.

Most of the time my plans are just a drawn rectangle with dimensions as a reminder to me. Too many times I’ve remembered wrong! I drew those above for the poster. If I had any original notes they are long gone.